In Africa, known as the “last virgin land”, the stories of Chinese gold diggers have never stopped.
Since aiding Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, the first generation of Chinese have helped the African people build infrastructure. Many Chinese workers have sacrificed their lives on the Tanzania-Zambia Railway. Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, the second generation of Chinese began to make their way into Africa and brought Chinese goods to Africa. Entering the 21st century, the third generation of Chinese, represented by basic communication service providers such as Huawei and ZTE, has woven a “communication network” towards modernization on the ancient African continent. Then the Chinese sold Chinese mobile phones to Africa. Today, the mobile phones most used by Africans come from a Chinese company, One-One Voice. At present, the Chinese are standing on the shoulders of previous generations of Chinese “intruders in Africa” and using basic projects such as roads and bridges, China-Africa trade, mobile Internet and mobile phones to begin to provide Internet services to the African people.
In the past, due to many reasons such as inconvenient Internet access, economic backwardness, and low educational level, Africa has been lagging behind in the development of e-commerce. Today, while these problems still exist, with the proliferation of smartphones, millions of Africans have access to the Internet and use mobile payment systems.
The perfect combination of mobile devices and mobile payment systems, coupled with the market gap caused by the lack of physical stores, provides new opportunities for global cross-border sellers.
In 2017, the online transaction volume of the African e-commerce market was US$16.5 billion, and it is expected to reach US$29 billion by 2022. The African e-commerce market is exploding. And this is just the beginning.